Demand Abbott not to cut environment jobs. Australia needs them!

The Australian Department of Environment has a shortage of officers with sufficient skills, expertise and experience to oversee complex compliance monitoring programs for major projects.

Yet about 16,000 public servants are predicted to lose their jobs after Tony Abbotts new budget. Sadly environmental staff have been named high on the list of those public servants.

The Department of Environment say they expect more than 20% of their staff.

Why does this matter you may ask? Well even without losing so many skilled officers they are already struggling to cope with the high amounts of projects and don’t have the resources for future environmental monitoring.

How many jobs will go at the Department of Environment, and who will be left to act as watchdogs for Australia's environment?

This is very concerning; take a review that was set up into what went wrong at Gladstone harbor.

The review found that "insufficient resourcing for Department of the Environment monitoring compromised the Australian Government's ability to adequately ensure compliance" with environmental conditions set on the harbour dredging project at Gladstone.

Further more, It also called for proper resources for future environmental monitoring, so that what happened at Gladstone doesn't happen elsewhere in Australia. Its recommendations included:

Resource levels within the department of the environment should be sufficient to ensure adequate monitoring capacity, including for active participation in post-approval technical committees; and

Increased resourcing being applied to monitoring and compliance in the department of the environment should be maintained as a matter of priority.

Yet Tony Abbott wants to weaken this department even more. And at what cost? More environmental disasters? More wildlife suffering and dying because there is no one looking out for them? More pollution, and the list goes on.

One has to ask, does Tony Abbott care about Australia at all?

Lets remind him that we do care. Lets show him with a substantial show in numbers that these cutbacks are not an option. That in the long run this will be detrimental to Australia and more costly than he can imagine.

Sign with me in solidarity with the Department of Environment and with Australia. They need you now more than ever before. Tony Abbott cannot go through with this.